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Associational resistance and associational susceptibility: specialist herbivores show contrasting responses to tree stand diversification

  • Plant-Animal Interactions - Original Research
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Abstract

Heterospecific neighbors may reduce damage to a focal plant by lowering specialist herbivore loads (associational resistance hypothesis), or enhance damage by increasing generalist herbivore loads (associational susceptibility hypothesis). We tested the associational effects of tree diversity on herbivory patterns of the tropical focal tree Tabebuia rosea in an experimental plantation setup, which contained tree monocultures and mixed stands. We found higher herbivore damage to T. rosea at higher tree diversity, indicating that T. rosea did not benefit from associational resistance but rather experienced associational susceptibility. The specific consideration of the two dominant insect herbivore species of T. rosea, the specialist chrysomelid Walterianella inscripta and the specialist pyralid Eulepte gastralis, facilitated understanding of the detected damage patterns. Tree diversity exerted opposite effects on tree infestation by the two herbivores. These findings point to resource concentration effects for the chrysomelid beetle (favored by tree monoculture) and to resource dilution effects for the pyralid caterpillar (favored by tree mixture) as underlying mechanisms of herbivore distribution. A strong contribution of the pyralid to overall damage patterns in diversified stands suggests that associational susceptibility may not necessarily be related to higher abundances of generalist herbivores but may also result from specialized herbivores affected by resource dilution effects. Thus, the identity and biology of herbivore species has to be taken into account when attempting to predict damage patterns in forest ecosystems.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Catherine Potvin for access to the Sardinilla site, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute for administration and logistics, as well as José Monteza and Sardinilla personnel for assistance with fieldwork. The Panamanian National Environmental Authority (ANAM) granted the required permits. We thank Wolfgang Einhäuser-Treyer (Philipps-University Marburg), and the Machine Learning Laboratory (ETH Zurich) for development of the leaf herbivory software; Konrad Fiedler (University of Vienna) and David Furth (Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Washington) for help with insect identification; Jake Alexander, Jana Collatz and Bettina Gutbrodt for useful comments on the manuscript. This study has been supported by a grant of the ETH North–South Centre to S.D and K.M.

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Correspondence to Karsten Mody.

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Communicated by Andreas Prinzing.

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Plath, M., Dorn, S., Riedel, J. et al. Associational resistance and associational susceptibility: specialist herbivores show contrasting responses to tree stand diversification. Oecologia 169, 477–487 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-011-2215-6

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